point that Thunder and Lightning was smack dab in the middle of a major goat-fuck. Rounds were ricocheting off the hatch cover, making an unpleasant hollow, ringing sound. There had to be at least two .50 cals up there, maybe three. Fire was coming only from the top of the near tower. The north tower, thank merciful God, didn’t have clear line of sight at the supply ship’s deck.
But there were three heavy spotlights mounted halfway up the south tower and they were making life hell for the men from Martinique.
“Froggy,” Fitz barked into his lipmike, “where are you?”
“Wheelhouse, Skipper. I’ve got Bandini back here with me. Thought we’d wait this little storm out.”
“Listen up, Froggy. One. I can’t raise Arrow. No response. Something’s wrong or he would have blown the towers. He may be down. Two, the troops are pinned down back here. Getting hammered. Can you take out those fucking spotlights? It’s like daylight back here.”
“Mais oui… I can, if I can get forward.”
“So get forward. Now. Use the foc’sle for cover. Come on, Froggy, we can’t take much more of this!”
“I’m moving—”
“I see you. Now, Bandini, you get up on the roof of the wheel-house with the RPG. You copy that? Take out those fucking machine guns as soon as Froggy kills the lights and you’ve got a shot. Copy?”
“Va bene, va bene,” Bandini said.
“Consider it done, mon capitain!” said Froggy.
Froggy didn’t waste any time. He’d shed his Arab costume, which clearly had outlived its usefulness, and scrambled forward, drawing fire. Rigging was collapsing on the deck around him, brought down by withering hail of lead from above. Meanwhile, Bandini was crouched in the shadows aft of the wheel, assembling his RPG tube. Good.
Fitz stepped out from behind the hatch cover and delivered a sustained burst of automatic fire into the top of the tower. His aim was true. It was enough to distract them long enough for Froggy to get on his feet, take careful aim, and extinguish the powerful spotlights lighting up the decks of the Obaidallah.
POP! POP! POP!
The three spotlights exploded one after the other, extinguished by one of the world’s preeminent sharpshooters. Now it was Bandini’s turn. The Great Bandini had a very simple solution for all of the world’s ills, from cold eggs to unruly governments or bad-mannered insurgents: Nuke ’em.
“Bandini!” Fitz said, stepping out from behind the hatch cover, his weapon on full auto. “It’s all yours!”
Bandini scrambled atop the stacked crates and onto the roof of the wheelhouse. He had the tube on his shoulder and his legs braced. He was an easy mark, but Froggy on the bow and Fitz on the stern were doing a good job of fire suppression, tracer rounds screaming toward the top of the tower. The sudden loss of the spotlights and the heavy incoming fire had momentarily disoriented the gunners.
There was a whoosh from the wheelhouse roof and a tongue of fire licked out the back end of the tube. A trail of whitish smoke streaked upward toward the top of the south tower. The gunners must have seen it coming because there was time for several loud screams before the top of the tower erupted into a brilliant fireball. A second later, the ammunition went up, sending great gouts of flame skyward. It resembled nothing so much as a giant Roman candle standing at the edge of the sea.
“Go! Go! Go!” Fitz screamed at his men now flying up out of the hold and exploding up onto the deck. They’d all shed their disguises when the shooting started. In their Kevlar body armor and helmets, bristling with weaponry, they now looked like exactly what they were, the deadliest hostage rescue team on the planet.
It was clearly time to hop and pop.
Moments earlier, Hawke and Stoke had still been inside the tunnel.
“How you say ‘Oh, shit’ in Arabic?” Stoke said to Hawke from the top of the steps. Bruce was floating on the surface, his grinning face pointed in the right direction, having sustained minimal damage on the way inside. Hawke pulled the tabs that inflated the daisy chain of five IBS boats they’d strung behind the sub. Each inflatable could carry only seven adults. Somehow, he’d have to get the women and children safely down here and into these boats, and just pray he had enough space for everyone.
Once they’d boarded the hostages, he and Stoke would swim aboard Bruce and they’d make a full-bore run, back through the tunnel and out into the open sea and—
Stoke had run up the stone steps to do a quick recon of the storehouse. Now he was back and he didn’t look happy.
“Jara,” Hawke said, moving the selection lever on his HK 9mm automatic weapon from semiautomatic to fully automatic.
“What’s that?”
“Jara? That’s how you say ‘Oh, shit’ in Arabic. What did you see up there, Stoke?”
“Tangos. Chinese mercenaries, looked like. And there’s a man down on the floor. Couldn’t tell who it was.”
“How many tangos?”
“Four.”
“Did they see you?”
“What do you think?”
“Let’s go get the sultan and his harem and get the hell out of here.”
Stoke and Hawke went through the door at the top of the steps high and low. The flash-bang Stoke tossed into the room took the Chinese mercs by surprise. Stoke dispatched them quickly with his Sig Sauer nine. The gun had a hush puppy attached to the muzzle. Pfft-pfft. Four whispers, head shots, and the four men crumpled. Hawke raced to the body Stoke had seen lying near the door, muttering a silent oath as he saw the man’s face.
It was Charlie Rainwater.
“Aw, shit,” Stoke said. “Is he dead?”
He wasn’t dead, but that was the only good news. He’d been stabbed repeatedly, and there was a particularly severe wound under his left earlobe. His chest was rising rapidly, thin, shallow breaths. Hawke got his hands under the big man, dropping to one knee for leverage, and squat-lifted him up, getting him onto his shoulder.
“Do a quick recon,” he told Stoke. “Then rendezvous with Fitz. I’ve got to get the Chief here back to the boat. Maybe Ali can stitch him up. Pump some morphine and ease his exit, if that’s how it goes.”
With the big man levered onto his shoulders, the last thing Hawke needed was somebody shooting at him. But that’s what happened as soon as he emerged from the main gate and turned left for the docks. Twin .50 cals from the sound of them, up on the south tower. Their fire was concentrated on the Obaidallah. Nobody on the old boat was shooting back, which was bad. It meant he was taking Rainwater out of the frying pan and directly into the fire. It was the damn spotlights up on the tower. If somebody could just—
Somebody did. He heard a succession of three loud pops and the docks were plunged again into darkness. He saw the silhouette of a man standing on the wheelhouse roof with an RPG tube and the trail of white smoke streaking toward the tower. The chattering .50s fell silent a beat before they disintegrated. The remaining north tower wasn’t a problem for now: still no clear line of fire at the docks.
But it would certainly be a problem later when Bruce came racing out of the tunnel on the surface towing a train of helpless women and children. In open water, with no cover, the big fifties on the tower would chew them up alive. Hawke saw that Rainwater had set his charges at the north tower base and jammed an iron rod into the door, sealing it. The men manning the tower were trapped inside.
Hawke bent down, balancing Rainwater on his shoulders, and found one of Charlie’s condom-covered igniters.
He was almost to the boat when the second tower blew. The explosion lit up the sky and helped him see where he was going. He ran into Fitz and his men who had scrambled off the boat and were headed to the rendezvous.
“Holy Jesus,” Fitz said, seeing Rainwater’s condition. Two of his men took the injured man from Hawke, got him into a makeshift fireman’s sling, and headed back to the boat. Captain Ali had already rigged an emergency sickbay on the table down in the saloon. He had iodine, gauze, needles, and morphine. As captain of an offshore
